1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing single-action multi-source presets for vehicle entertainment systems, and climate control systems, including the ability to perform incomplete single actions and more specifically to a system and method that allows multi-source presets without recording user sequences.
2. Discussion
Manufacturers have long produced cars having radios with preset or favorite buttons that allow a user to quickly and easily select a desired radio station for the current radio band. As vehicle radios have become more complex and added additional options to become vehicle entertainment systems, these preset or favorite buttons have not changed.
Originally, preset buttons manually moved an analog tuner of the radio to an estimated position, regardless of whether the radio was tuned to the FM or AM band. Therefore, a preset for a particular FM radio station would not work as a preset for a particular AM radio station when the radio was tuned to the AM band as the preset would instead move the tuner to the desired FM position. After pressing the presets, the user also had to adjust the tuner to fine tune the radio to optimally receive the desired broadcast. Due to the mechanical nature of the preset buttons, pressing the preset to move the tuner from one end to of the band to the other end required significant force. Over time, many of these mechanical preset buttons would fail due to their mechanical nature, and not move the tuner to the desired position.
As radios started using digital tuners, many of the problems associated with mechanical preset buttons were eliminated. Digital preset buttons are easy to push and their digital nature allows for precise tuning. Digital preset buttons also allowed a preset button to include at least one favorite radio station for each radio band, thereby allowing for many more presets than analog presets and without requiring additional space. More specifically, digital presets change their set selections depending on the selected radio band, such as the user being able to assign an AM frequency selection and an FM frequency selection to the same preset button. As the FM radio band gained popularity, to allow different users of a vehicle to each have their own FM presets or provide additional preset options to a user, many vehicles would provide an FM1 and FM2 selection. However, the preset buttons were limited to selecting a set preset from the current audio source, such as AM, FM1, or FM2, and were only available when the associated audio source was selected and active.
As vehicle radios move to multi-platform vehicle entertainment systems, the preset functions have remained essentially the same even though radios now use a variety of signals in addition to the common AM and FM bands to create a complete entertainment system. More particularly, vehicle radios or vehicle entertainment systems may include or receive multiple sources, such as AM, FM, Satellite Radio, tape, CD, CD changers, MP3 devices, USB devices, music players, IPods, memory devices, navigation systems and other sources. Even though the entertainment systems include more sources, the preset buttons, as illustrated in FIG. 5, still only allow selection of radio stations, more particularly only allow selections of AM, FM, and in some instances satellite favorite radio stations. Therefore, if a user desires to change from a current FM radio frequency to another favorite AM radio frequency or Satellite Radio channel; the user must first change the source selection and then select the desired preset button to select the desired frequency or channel. This multi-step process to change between favorite stations on different signal sources may distract a user's attention from the road.
Although some radios have presets that allow selection of a particular CD in a CD changer, a particular CD cannot be selected until the CD changer is selected as the source input. Preset buttons also still do not allow for favorite inputs or selections relating to sources other than the current source. For example, while in the FM radio source, the user cannot select individual albums or files on an MP3 or USB device using a preset button. Also, if a user is listening to an audio book on a MP3 player, and then desires to listen to the radio, such as an FM radio station, the user cannot select the particular desired radio station with a single push of a preset button or a single-action that changes the input for the vehicle entertainment system from the audio book to the FM band and the desired FM radio station directly in a single button push.
Even though vehicle entertainment systems now commonly include large displays for graphical content, the presets have remained hard keyed and all available preset buttons are still only programmable for the currently selected source.
Some vehicle entertainment systems also include an integrated climate control system which may make it more difficult or time consuming for the user to enter desired settings, as compared to traditional knob climate control systems. In addition, even some stand-alone climate control systems may require multiple steps to perform a desired function at a designed temperature. Therefore, there is a need for a simplified interface for climate control systems.